Wednesday, February 2, 2011

This cookie has all-purpose and bread flour, 2 sticks of butter and semi-sweet and milk chocolate. Although Joanne Chang baked up lots of Toll House cookies in her youth and through college at Harvard, she suggests getting the best chocolate possible. I used dark chocolate and milk chocolate (from the pound plus bars at Trader Joe's...which is repackaged really good chocolate).

The cookies are soooo big! I used this 6 ounce (the larger box) of Jello for scale so you can see how big they were! The dough is 1/4 cup and only 4 cookies fit on my half-sheet pan. I also made smaller ones (fitting 8 cookies on the half-sheet pan).

I wish they were less flat, but they were really really good. I baked one batch for my friends after a 12 hour rest and the remainder after a 24 hour rest. Resting is a really important part of the process.

On a side note, I picked up these cute bowls at the Sur la Table once-a-year sale. Only $2.99 each! Whoo hoo. And, I bought them while I was on vacation in San Francisco, so it didn't really count...you know, vacation spending is different than regular spending! :) At least, that's how I rationalize more bowls in the house.

They are good!! I'm baking some right now using dough I froze. What's crazy is how different yours look from mine. It probably has to do with the brand of chocolate and how much it was plus the brand of flour, type of cookie sheet. Who knows. Or maybe the recipe in her book is different than the one I used, though it sounds like the same one with the bread flour...

Whoops. I just tried to comment, but my internet died in the middle of it so sorry if this posts twice! Mary, I wanted to tell you your cookies and photos look amazing!! And I also want to ask if this recipe makes a gooey chewy cookie or a crunchy one... I'm looking for a good gooey one!

I've been wanting to get my hands on that book for a while. I'm on a long wait list to get it from the Library. The look of these chocolate chip cookies remind me a lot of Dorie's recipe, a bit flatter and chewier than most cookies.

@KKKaren, You need to rest the dough...and you can take a nap too. The rest period allows the eggs and liquids to blend into the flour and other dry ingredients. The dough will be drier and that is what you want. Even the inventor of Toll House cookies wrote "we refrigerate the dough overnight"...but those aren't on the instructions anymore! :) - mary

@Jackie Jackie, I didn't save a cookie from the previous batch to taste test and I gave almost all the cookies away to friends and co-workers who just wolfed them down. Both batches were tasty. I don't know the number of the smaller scoop - sorry I don't have much info for you.